rime of the ancient mariner
by mirrored light
Summary: "Water, water everywhere- and not a drop to drink." Of tea, mind palaces and insanity. Mycroft-centric


**Disclaimer: I do not own BBC Sherlock**

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Mind palace is a term of misdemeanour, a glittering starlight façade, rough and uncombed as a curse. Mycroft chooses of store in files and folders, to meticulate and reorder, but to choose any, his mind palace would be a deep impermeable sheet of water, wavering as flaxen silver.

As he curls a cup of beaten porcelain around his finger, the shadows of dark, glistening nighttime water brush across his face, cool and almost sweet. A lake by a road by a river, the perfumed hangings of weeping willows, blurred recognition like childhood. Consciousness is a skimming, skipping stone across the water's edge, pooling and bubbling at every trajectory, stirring shoals of bone shimmer thoughts.

Well, then. If that's how it is.

**i.**

"Mycroft!"

Sherlock, of course it's Sherlock on the first skip, small and coolly petulant, curly hair flattened to one side of his head. A frog Band-Aid hangs loose by his bony left kneecap, his fingertips are orange from sugar toffee. Swaggering along backwards, Red beard by his feet, sun in his eyes. He almost stumbles on a crooked piece of pavement, Mycroft wonders if he should care.

Most people feel something when they look at people, anything at all, a hard bubble of careless joy or strokes of loathing. Mycroft can't be bothered beyond a cursory once over, a cold slithering painter's brush dab of attention, a gasping, empty void. Sherlock looks at him expectantly _will you teach me to deduce today?_ Not quite as small as Mycroft thought he was, his head almost comes up to Mycroft's chin. If he tries, his deduction might just reach the height of Mycroft's feet.

It always comes up to comparison, between them- Sherlock can quote a coordinate and steer a ship, but Mycroft can strike a deal and frame a bargain, wrapping his softening words around and around you like dead, crisping flowers, decorating your grave. _Playing at being grownups. _Worn pastels in December, sky like milky tea. Corpses staggering to work, to play, to life.

_Sherlock's growing older_, he thinks absently. Somehow, somewhere, he still doesn't care.

**ii.**

Goldfish. Panic as a concept is harshly abstract, impure insanity, but if Mycroft would have it his way, the goldfish would panic in neat order, marching down the streets in muted footsteps, their mouths opening and closing in unison.

People are a resource, he learnt that in the government. People are a commodity, necessary but expendable. Cheap plastic pawns of diner chess sets. Mycroft imagines them in wars bumping slowly into each other in exaggerated orbits while their faces slowly melt off and drip in piles on the ground.

(Those are his more lurid moments.)

"The entire concept of population as a livestock is redundant." Words like flickering lamplight, the kick of awful Styrofoam coffee. "People need something to believe in, they don't need someone to trust. Be a concept- not a person. They'll trip over their feet escorting themselves to the slaughterhouse." A small, weighted pause, ripping the air like twisted metal. "I do believe we are the only cannibalistic species who are self aware."

Looking back at the night (or was it morning?) Mycroft can't remember who told him that, only remember the words jangling reflections. Nonsense sounds. Still, it was the idea that counts. He thinks almost unwillingly of John Watson, surrounded by a winter coat of grime and dust and war like a foreign language sticking to the roof of his tongue. _Sherlock's livestock friend. _"We lost good cattle in Afghanistan."

Mycroft almost laughs. The stone brushes efficiently over water, leaving tiny spots of waves, glancing and bright. A bishop falls over the chessboard.

_Check._

**iii.**

Two sugar cubes, accusatory in their posture, grainy and membranous, sinking slowly through silt brown. The splash this time sets off a thousand little clocks, seconds blurring blithely, air full of lilac and sycamore. Moriarty creeps to the top of the wave, cresting white foam and bows elaborately to the cool expanse- "Staying alive is still so boring, don't you think?"

Does he think? Moriarty banging his head against a thin aluminium mirror, bruises blooming at his mouth and neck and forehead, turning him into beauty. _Don't I deserve to degrade myself in a better place? This mirror smells of aftershave._

"I'm trying to reach myself. Through the mirror. Leap of faith, Dorothy." Mycroft imagines how he must look in his suit and almost belly, hair combed aside in an affectation of pomp. "You, Mister Ice Man, you wouldn't see anything at all. 'Cause you've already found yourself. That, or lost yourself too deep to find." Moriarty yawns. "Tell me about your brother."

The humour squats solid and insinuating, taking up most of the floor. _Ha. Ha. Ha. _Anthea walks in, her tall candlelight figure brushed silver by twilight, her smartphone held aloft like a trophy. He imagines her in the backseat of a limousine smiling politely to John Watson _"I'm sorry, have we met?"_

Have we met? Moriarty, mirror. He nods, a cursory twitch. "Where shall I start?"

**iv.**

Insanity in the next jump (leap of faith) insanity cold and precious, insanity sculpted out of ice. As clearly perfect, as fragile and breakable. Splinter thin.

True madness lurks in the imaginary grime of softly manicured fingernails, in the filing cabinets of the deranged, in fireplaces, in stoves, in the bright flickering moments of glory before the ashy dawn. The man built a mind palace out of a house. Or a house out of a mind palace.

Mycroft's seen the way Sherlock's eyes glaze over sometimes, sees him withdraw inside and brush the padlocks across his doors, withdraw to cheap Chinese food and syringes and Technicolor bubbles large enough to swallow his dreams. Do you need a house to live in your mind palace? If you don't, Sherlock's half and all the way gone.

Watson's wife is something to consider, with the butterfly- twist of her smile and the smell of a waxing moon. Sometimes, Mycroft wishes he didn't see quite as much as he did, wishes he looked at a person and saw them instead of their pets and their phone number and their affairs and their job and how happy they were with their life- what are people but a bundle of tics?

The soft skip sends a drop of water careening across the sky, if he looks carefully, it may have trapped the sun. He takes a slow careful sip of his tea, hopes it doesn't spill.

(A single cinnamon drop wets parchment, trapping words in vision. His hand's don't shake.)

**v.**

The pond by the road by the river, the weeping willow stooping low, feathery tendrils snaking. Why is it he always ends up exactly where he started? _I've found myself to deep to lose. Except that I'm lost._ Graduate school, University, primary, birth? The pool looks at him coldly, the moment's breath is shallow.

Irene Adler may have drifted somewhere at the corner of his vision, Anthea would ask _is she naked?_ Of course she's naked, liquid moonlight, trapped in fact. She would be better off in Sherlock's head, preserved instead of dissected into impartial observations.

_Stand in front of a mirror, Mister Ice Man._ Is he insane? He measures out his thoughts like he's baking a cake, is he crazy? The skipping stone lands with a muted plop, sinking already, claimed by his mind. The entire journey will be a memory later: to savour, to share, to discard.

Mycroft places his saucer on the table, feeling inherently the slow vibrations it makes across the stuffy room.

He turns and faces the door, briefcase in hand, smile on face. _Mind palaces are certainly overrated, _he thinks. _There's just no sense to them._

The sea barely murmurs that day.

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**A/N: Please read and review!**


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